I Got Pregnant. I Chose to Keep My Baby. And My Christian School Humiliated Me. “My school could have made an example of how to treat a student who made a mistake, owned up to it, accepted the consequences, and is now being supported in her decision to choose life. But they didn’t.” This is a difficult situation. I understand Christian schools not wanting to appear to be condoning certain behaviors, but I think a girl in this situation needs to be affirmed for doing the right thing in having her baby rather than having an abortion.
Here’s a short but profitable list of reads discovered this week:
Can We Really Be Free From Fear? HT to nikkipolani. “The secret to our emancipation from enslavement to our excessive fears is a fear transfer. We need to stop fearing other things more than Jesus.” “For the Christian, every storm serves the Lord Jesus and demonstrates some aspect of his sovereign power.”
Domestic Abuse: A Victim’s Story. This is far more common than realized, in homes where you’d least expect it. If you need help or know someone who does, or suspect someone does, please read this.
Royalty-free images and copyright violations. This was from a Facebook post about a blogger who had gotten in trouble for using a photo she found on the Internet without permission. This article was linked and gives clear definitions about the different kinds of licenses, sources for free photos, etc.
As We Empty Ourselves For God, He Will Fill Us. This was a helpful principle for me. I used to get discouraged when I felt depleted after extending myself for someone instead of realizing that that’s perfectly natural.
What’s Worse – Removing Scripture or Adding to It? (HT to Challies). Both are wrong, of course, but this particularly addresses that some versions of the Bible that people accuse of leaving out verses don’t, actually, and some add them in, which is just as wrong.
Being Pence-ive About Dinner With the Ladies. You’ve probably seen a number of posts about Vice-President Mike Pence’s rule of thumb about not meeting alone with women, some thoughtful and some ridiculous. I thought this was one of the best.
Buy nice not twice. Good advice. Being frugal doesn’t always mean buying cheap. But beyond that, this was one of the most balanced posts about minimalism that I have read.
Showing vs. telling, the main principle of good writing these days, and how best to do it.
Charting the Legacy of Les Miserables. If you’re a fan of the novel, you might like this article about a book about it. I particularly liked the paragraph about the impact on French society.
And, finally, for a smile: this is adorable. A little girl sees an old water heater set out on the street for pickup and thinks it is a robot.
It’s been a little while since I’ve been able to share some interesting online reads with you. Here is my latest collection:
Behind on Bible Reading? Sometimes our Bible reading plans from January have fallen by the wayside by this time. This is some encouragement to pick back up where you left off: “The point of reading daily is to continuously stay in the Word so I might better know and worship the Lord, not to be legalistically bound to a calendar.”
No, Stay at Home Moms Do Not Waste Their Education, HT to Challies. I have felt this way but hadn’t put in into words quite like this. Very much agree that “Education is not just a synonym for job training” and “Education helps people do a better job at any task by helping them discover how to think, how to learn, and how to exercise the self-discipline necessary for achievement.”
Completely and Utterly Lost. “If something is lost, you can’t find it. So if my will is lost in God’s will, then it is indistinguishable from His.”
Killed For Christ in the Amazon. This is a very short (a little over 4 minutes) retelling of Jim Elliot and his five missionary coworkers who were killed by the people then know as Aucas, told by his daughter Valerie Shepard. At such a short telling, there is so much left out, but it’s a good intro for people who might not be familiar with the story, and it was on the BBC web site.
A Just Silence, HT again to Challies. “We’ve all felt the pressure to speak out about things that we know little to nothing about. The increasingly prevalent sentiment is that if Christians-and especially Christian leaders-don’t speak up on the hot button issues of the day, then they are complicit in fueling social injustice.”
A lot of my blog friends and a family member or two are experiencing a lot of snow this week. A perfect time to get cozy and read some edifying material. 🙂 Here are a few thought-provoking reads that caught my eye the past week or two:
Are You Not Ready to Worship? HT to Challies. “A worship leader who’s aware that his/her congregation is most likely filled with people who aren’t exactly fired up and ready for…. epic worship…will present a congregation with the gloriously good news of a great and faithful God, a gracious Redeemer, and a generously outpoured Holy Spirit, instead of a guilt-inducing pressure to hype something up that isn’t there to begin with.” Yes. I hate to hear people being scolding for how they are singing or what they look like while singing – that’s not particularly worship-inducing.
Theonomy, or “a movement that teaches the earthwide rule of God through the reinstitution of the Law of Moses for every nation.” Why people promote this and what’s wrong with the idea.
And lastly, I debated about this one lest it sound like I thought yelling at God was ok. But if you think of it more like an anguished prayer, I think many could commiserate with this little boy:
Thankfully it’s not too cold where we are, and next week doesn’t look too bad except for some cool nights. But I am ready to see spring!
I usually go a couple of weeks or more between these, but had so many, I decided to go ahead and list them. These are all thought-provoking reads found in the last week or so.
God’s Work in Your Bible Reading. “The Bible was precious because it mediated a sight of God, and a relation to God, which are sweeter than any other experience. This was the spring of what Sweeney called ‘Edwards’s lifelong love affair with Scripture.'”
Rethinking Phil. 4:13. It’s for far more than positive thinking and winning ball games.
#NotMyPresident. I’ve been appalled at some of the reaction to the president-elect. Many of us weren’t happy with the last two elections, but we didn’t act like this. I don’t agree 100% with everything about Trump, but, as a Christian, I appreciated this perspective.
Want to raise successful boys? Children, especially boys, learn better when they have more opportunities to move around than the average school gives them.
It’s been quite a while since I have been able to share with you some interesting reading I’ve found online the past few weeks. So here goes:
What Grieving People Wish You Knew at Christmas. “For those who’ve recently lost someone they love, the holidays can seem more like something to survive than to enjoy.” That’s true for other holidays and occasions besides Christmas and for other losses or hard times as well.
3 Fresh Ideas for Improving Your Bible Reading in 2017. Love the opening sentences here: “I am still blown away by the idea that the God of the universe wants to communicate with us on a daily basis and that he has chose to do so in this miraculous book we call the Bible. Historically—both the history it contains and the history of its shaping and transmission in the community of faith—it is astounding. Literarily it is magnificently crafted. Narratively it is riveting, and poetically it is breath-taking. Theologically it is deeply grounding, and practically it is life-altering.”
Learning to Let Go. “Even though a parent’s spiritual influence is so important, I was never meant to fill the place that only God can in my daughter’s life. He is a better teacher, protector, and guide than I can ever be.”
And finally, a friend shared this on Facebook: someone added dialogue to his pet guinea pigs’ movements, and it turned out pretty funny, especially for this time of year when pumpkin spice stuff is everywhere.
Or this is even more my style, minus the spa.
Happy Saturday!
Stray Thoughts 